why aren't there more creative women?

by lois phillips hudson

despite all the disagreements among various schools of psychology, there are points on which almost everyone agrees. one is that we don't know very much about what we call "the creative process," but we do know that creative insights, whether they be insights that flash a marvelous metaphor into our heads, insights that enable us to put together a story or a novel, or insights that produce scientific discoveries--all these insights arise, somehow, from our subconscious.

now let us look at what happens to the subconscious of just about every single human female in any time, any culture. every one of us knows that we are at the mercy of just about every physically normal male between the ages of thirteen and seventy-five. we many not let ourselves think about it, as numbers of young women who hitchhike have said to me. but it is always there--that knowledge we have had since we were very young.

and many of us have had terrible experiences by the time we are ten years old. my first was at nine. a seventy-year-old man who was the father of my mother's best friend. he was also a preacher. i had been taught to revere him. mr. betts did not rape me. he followed me into the woods when i thought i was alone, and he fondled me. i cannot describe my terror--not even today. nor can i describe my feelings of guilt. i must have somehow done something hideously wrong, out exploring alone in the woods when he came upon me. otherwise, how could a preacher, the father of my mother's beloved friend, how could he have done that?

and what was it that was wrong with me?

when i was thirteen, my mother arranged for me to catch a ride, with our neighbor, to town six miles away. it was during the war, and we had gas rationing. i was to ride to kirkland with mr. ahmann, go to the dentist, and wait for my father to pick me up there on his way home from work at boeing. mr ahmann, the father of thirteen children, including three girls who were my best friends, took a back route through what was at that time a forest. he stopped the car and turned to me with a look in his eyes that, again, i cannot describe. he pulled me to him, his hand over my new breasts, kissed me with his tongue in my mouth. i had never been kissed in my life by anybody except my mother. (mr. ahmann, incidentally, is one of the reasons why, three years later, i didn't date boys, to the consternation of my concerned guidance counselor.) he was trembling, but for the firs time in my life, i really understood all the implications of male strength. i was an unusually strong, athletic girl, and i had my full growth, but i knew i was helpless. even so, i thought of how i could manage to break away and run into the forest. no, i thought, he can catch you. it's better to beg.

so i begged. what does it do to a human female to have to beg for her survival--her plain, simple physical survival--from the time she is ten years old? or even younger. what does it do to us to be taught to beg, to flatter, to cajole, taught by both men and women, from the time we are tiny? i'm not talking about optimum conditions for creativity here. i'm talking about survival--physical survival. what does this do to our sense ourselves as creative human beings? i submit that the creative woman has surmounted obstacles that most men have never imagined. i begged him. i made myself into nothing, and begged.

and after a few more agonizing squeezings of new tender breasts, and a few more kisses with his disgusting saliva all over my face, he stopped trembling and let me go. in a shaky voice, he told me he would let me go if i promised never to tell anybody. of course i promised. so far as i can remember, that was the first time i made a promise i knew i didn't intend to keep. (oh yes, we women are so sly and cunning.) that was the first time my adult integrity was raped.

i did, finally, after i recovered from the worst of my own self-loathing, after i had scrubbed my mouth so many times that i not longer felt so filthy that i couldn't speak of it--i did finally tell my mother. i knew it would hurt her, but i had to. and i must insert here, how many girls can't tell their mothers? how many girls have mothers who have been so frightened by men that they have, in subtle ways, made it clear that they do not want to hear any such stories from their daughters?

and when i think of my father at that time, i am nauseated. every time the ahmann girls came over to our house, he had to get his hands on them. there was always a funny, laughing reason to give them a hug. (he never, of course, hugged me!) always a reason to whistle at them, pinch them, slap their fannies, as the male saying goes. i know that my father would never have done more than that, but i could tell they hated it. and i knew how they would feel if they ever knew what their father had done to me!

so--we never tell, do we?

but we need our egos. at a cocktail party for me as an author, a man i knew fairly well, a colleague of my husband's, said to me, with the greatest of admiration, "lois, i can't imagine how much guts it takes to be a writer. you must have to have the ego of a prizefighter." i agreed. you have to have an ego that will make you get up again, no matter how many times you've been knocked down. to do anything creative--in science, business, anything--you have to get up again and try again. so who are we? if we have no right to our own bodies, how can we have the right to our own wills? (it's hard to have the ego of a prizefighter when you know that any punk kid may take a notion to rape and perhaps kill you.) and, most of all, there is our feeling that we don't have the right to our own feelings.

i think the belief that one has the right to her own feelings has got to be the basis of any creativity. you have to feel that what you see, what you hear, what you think--that these things are totally valid.

but what if you are told, in a thousand ways, from the time that you are born, that you can and will be raped? what if you are told that whether you want sex or not, whether you want to cater to another person's ego or not, this is what you were put on earth to do? what rights do you have then? how do you dare to have your own feelings? what great artist does not express his or her own feelings?

what, besides the right to her own feelings, does any creative person have to feel? you have to feel that you are in control. this is a story, this is an essay, this is a novel, this is a painting, this is a musical composition that i will control! this is what i want to say, and i will say it!

if you are a human female, somehow you have to decide that you do have a right to your own feelings, a right to control what you are doing, and that despite everything that everybody has taught you, you will assert that right.

you

this little piggy went to market,
thighs all swollen, teeming with blood
chubby fingers inch closer, circling in on the
chopping block, bumbling through the filth,
clumsy tongue, choking--
gushing, an open wound oozing, spilling her
scent, all raw and ripped open,
cold places cooked up.

your silence is a notch in his belt,
you know.
while he went shoving all of that bigness in
a too-small place,
this little piggy stayed home.
perfect crimes go
unpunished,
you know.

HUNGER: part three of her working biography

Sometimes she didn't wear a bra when she went out places. She thought that perhaps the nicest thing about living one's day-to-day life in a woman's body was feeling that little jiggle of soft flesh when you moved. She liked a little jiggle with her movement. And she supposed she didn't really need a bra, at least not in the sense that some women needed one. Her breasts were small and she was actually more comfortable, in a practical, earthy sense, without one. She really only wore them for the push-up and perk-up they provided. She liked the way a good push-up could round out her top, making her clothing drape down over her in that soft way unique to round, doughy women. She thought that some women might be offended or insulted by the term doughy, but she liked it. It was a warm, hearty word. It tasted good in her mouth when she said it. Doughy. It meant soft, malleable, rich. Dough swelled with anticipation of heat. And then when exposed to that heat, it shamelessly imbibed the energy and blossomed into something that had the potential to fill all the senses with flavor or, at the very least, to get a reaction from those who encountered it.

For her things always existed at this most personal, intimate, bodily level. That was the way she felt and experienced things--all kinds of things. This was very personal and it wasn't really something she could share easily with other people. She counted on those few people in her life to just feel along with her through a warm, comfortable silence. She craved understanding and to be understood. She supposed life really was mostly just about hunger. She hungered to be listened to and questioned and listened to some more.

There were all different kinds of hunger. Hunger for food, yes, but also for knowledge, compassion, understanding, love, anger, pain, joy, comfort and any and every thing, feeling, or experience that one could crave, and all of this psychic hunger was always felt and experienced at the most basic bodily level. Yes, she supposed life really was mainly about hunger. You hungered for something, and maybe you'd be satiated. You'd get to taste something, savor it if you wanted, and then inevitably you'd shit it away and the hunger would start again. Maybe for more of the same, maybe for something else, or maybe you always hungered for something you could never have. Regardless, when you stopped hungering for things, that's when you'd die.

STUFF: part two of her working biography

She owned lots of stuff. Mostly dishes, clothes and an assortment of kitschy knickknacks. If you opened any of her drawers or cupboards anywhere in her tiny apartment, you would likely come across a plethora of knickknacks stacked and shoved unceremoniously away. Her shelves were stacked with boxes brimming with more stuff. Old photographs, letters, cards, school papers and other miscellaneous papers that she didn't really know what to do with but couldn't bear to part with. Really when it came right down to it, she lived in a dusty fire hazard. This wasn't terribly unusual, she supposed. Lots of people had lots of stuff. People made livings out of carving out pathways in the homes of pack-rats. She had seen plenty of TV shows about this very topic back when she used to get more than five basic channels. She knew she wasn't nearly as hopeless as those poor slobs on the TV. But still.

LOVE: part one of her working biography

She wondered what it would feel like if for once the person she loved was the same person she wanted in her bed. She ached to know what it would feel like to be in love. She had known what it felt like to have someone be in love with her. It scared her and so she ignored it. She seemed to do that with most things that were frightening. She didn’t think she felt lonely; lonely wasn’t a vocabulary word that existed in her inner dialogue. But then she began to wonder if maybe she ignored it (the feeling, the word) because it scared her. She couldn’t help but think that maybe she was just playing a semantics game, calling the feeling by other names. Rationalizing and explaining it away. Maybe she was lonely. She just couldn’t be sure because it wasn’t a word she knew how to use to talk about herself.

She wondered how she was ever going muster the boldness needed to be completely intimate with another person. Intimacy was something that she believed required submission to total vulnerability. She had never been very good at submitting, at least not when it counted the most. She liked sex and thought about it all the time, but for some reason in her mind sex and intimacy had never been the same, or even shared the same category of brain space.

a "work" in progress: theatre of the living - 1

H: Hannah

H2: Holly

A: Alex

Act I, Scene I (ha ha ha)

At a sports bar after a day of work at the office.

H: Ima go smoke a cigarette. Anyone care to join me?

A: Cigarettes kill. Let’s go. You got one for me?

H: (emphatically) Always. Holly, you want one?

A: You are just way too anxious to poison me with your cancerous little beauties…that’s what you called them, right? Your little beauties?

H: Yeah. It’s all a part of my evil plan to kill you slowly, one puff at a time, so that no one can ever finger me for it.

A: Finger you?

H: Not in public. I don’t wanna make the wait staff jealous.

A: You’re crazy.

H: (with hyperbolic bravado) Crazy for Camels!

(all laugh)

H2: Oh my god, my lungs are gonna hate me for this.

H: Fuck your lungs. Who needs ‘em? Breathing is totally overrated, love kitten.

H2: (laughs) Okay, you’re right sugar buns.

H: I’m always right. Isn’t that right, Alex?!

A: *cough* *cough*

H: Shut the fuck up. (Jokingly defensive) You know I only have a tiny bit of a smokers’ cough. That little cough is just something I do like how some people bite their nails. It’s just a thing. And don’t lie, I know it turns you on.

A: Oh yeah. I love those nicotine-stained old broads who wreak of cigarettes…

H : And hack up phlegm wads. It’s like the ultimate cum.

A: (laughing, feigning incredulity) Phlegm wads! You’re nasty. Oh yeah. It’s like, emphysema! Fuck yeah bitch…I’ll make you cough. I’ll make you cough like you’ve never coughed before. I’ll make you cough till your eyes pop outta your skull.

H: Oh shut the fuck up and smoke your goddamn cigarette. I know you prefer those old lady 100’s, but these will have to do for now.

H2: Oh my god you guys, these Camels are intense. (pauses, takes a drag of her cigarette) John doesn’t smoke. He hates smoking. He thinks it’s disgusting. Well fuck him. I think he’s disgusting. God. I can’t even stand to look at him. He makes me wanna throw up. Seriously.

H: Don’t you have asthma? And when are you gonna break up with that dude?

H2: Well, just a little. But I always carry my inhaler, so I’ll be fine. And, I’ll break up with him sometime soonish. I just need some time to figure it out. I mean, we’ve been together for three years.

A: (To Holly) You look pretty natural sucking on that cancer stick. You must have had some practice.

H2: Oh I have had lots of practice…

H: Sucking on sticks?

H2: Oh yeah. I’m a pro.

A: I dunno if I believe you. I think I need to see some proof. Care to demonstrate?

H: Yeah Hol, wanna tag team?

H2: Sure. Some hot H-squared action cum’in…that’s c-u-m-i-n-g… right up! Hannah, …

A: Oh god.

H: Oh yeah. I’ve been known to have multiple phlegm wads. (all laugh) Yeah, but seriously though. I dunno. Penises are kinda weird, don’t you think? Like weird little alien creatures…

H2: Yeah, little alien monsters…

H: Speaking of the little devils, one time I ran into this drunk homeless dude outside of the Hard Times…

A: Hard Times?

H: It’s this fabulously dingy restaurant-coffee shop type place on Cedar and Riverside, I think.

H2: Where?

H: Oh I forgot. You’re from Fargo. It’s by the U of M, downtown. Anyway, I could tell this dude was totally tanked, and I figured I could take him if he tried to pull any douchey shit…unless he pulled out a knife or something, then I would have been fucked...but anyway, I digress. So we start chatting a bit as I walk away towards my car and he launched into this monologue about how no two people are the same and about how his stepfather thought he could “stick his twinkie in him” and how he stabbed him and he got put in a juvenile detention center for five years.

H2: I don’t like you pallin’ around with these people. You worry me.

H: I’ll pall around with whom ever I please, thank you very much. But thanks for your concern snookie-ookums.

H2: Any time hunny-bunny.

A: Well muffin,

H: Muffin??!

A: Sorry, I’m new at this. Anyway, pumpkin,

H2: What’s with the food names?

A: Anyway, slut puppy ass clown cock sucker,

H: Excuse me?!

A: I’m sorry, I meant cock and/or cunt sucker,

H: Thank you.

A: (shakes head and sighs with sarcastic annoyance) Now, as I was trying to say before I was rudely interrupted, who’s gonna take care of your cats when some crack head guns you down in the alley while you’re fucking some dude in the dumpster behind your apartment?!

H: Not in the dumpster. By the dumpster. God. Don’t you ever listen? And that only happened once…although I think I may have developed a fetish. But it was funny, cause I had been reading this cheesy romance novel where the heroine said to her lover, "I want you right here, right now, on this piano," and so I substituted dumpster for piano. Besides, I like a little humor with my awkward, mediocre sex in dark, dingy alleys.

A: God you’re weird.

H: More than you know, ass fuck douche cunt dick wad. More than you know.

A: Wow, somebody took her bitch pills this morning!

H: (whines like little child) Holly, Alex insinuated that I was a bitch.

H2: Alex, did you insinuate that Hannah is a bad word? Shame on you, you naughty, naughty boy. You’re gonna have to be punished.

H: Brutally.

A: I hope there’s a whip of some sort involved.